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Plato's Apology

Plato's Apology. “The unexamined life is not worth living.” --Socrates. Content of the work. Socrates’s defense against charges of impiety before the Athenian court. Note: “Apology” here means defense or justification, not expression of regret for a transgression. Timeline.

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Plato's Apology

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  1. Plato's Apology “The unexamined life is not worth living.” --Socrates

  2. Content of the work Socrates’s defense against charges of impiety before the Athenian court. Note: “Apology” here means defense or justification, not expression of regret for a transgression.

  3. Timeline 469 B.C.: Socrates is born 431 B.C.: Peloponnesian Wars begin 427 B.C.: Plato is born 404 B.C.: Sparta defeats Athens, imposes rule of “the Thirty” (32c) 403 B.C.: Democracy restored 399 B.C.: Socrates is prosecuted 347 B.C.: Plato dies

  4. Charges against Socrates • Formal charges: irreligion and corruption of youth • Earlier, informal charges underlying these

  5. Earlier charges • Studies things in the sky and below the earth • Makes the worse argument the stronger (like the Sophists) • Does not believe in the gods • Teaches these things to others (like the Sophists)

  6. Oracles in classical Greece • Priests or priestesses who transmit divine messages • They interpret signs, such as: • rustle of leaves or movement of objects cast into a spring • frenzied, ecstatic cries of enchanted priestesses • Their pronouncements are often cryptic.

  7. Socrates and the oracle at Delphi • “No one is wiser than Socrates.” • Socrates: He means I avoid claiming to know what I don’t know. • Socrates: He means I should expose the false conceit of knowledge by challenging people to reflective justification. • Appeals to this command in justification of his conduct.

  8. Divine command theory revisited • Contradiction with Euthyphro? • Is Socrates defining piety as what the gods approve of? • Comparison with Abraham • Role of interpretation • Another possibility: ironic interpretation of Socrates’s appeal (38a)

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